By Camille T. Taiara

The Salvation Army plans to demolish a 74-unit single-room-occupancy hotel it owns in the Tenderloin and is evicting its 42 residents. Known as the Bridgeway Project, the hotel houses adults recovering from substance abuse, many of whom are elderly or disabled and have lived there for years.

Coming in turbulent economic times when affordable housing is scarce and countless low-income San Franciscans stand on the brink of homelessness, this might seem an odd action for an organization with a mission to help the poor.

The Salvation Army wants to build transitional housing for adults in recovery and youths coming out of foster care at the site. The organization has assured the tenants it will comply with state and local relocation laws and help them find new housing, but the tenants have organized to seek legally binding guarantees that they won't wind up on the streets.

If all goes well, the tenants' efforts could help establish higher relocation standards in San Francisco for other low-income renters who find themselves in a similar position.

"We don't have a problem with transitional housing," said James Tracy of the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness's Right to a Roof program, which tenants approached for help. "But the question to ask is, transition to what?"

Tenacious tenants

Bridgeway resident Velma Smith has won some tough battles. Eight years ago she kicked a 17-year addiction to crack and methamphetamines. Now the 47-year-old single mother spends her days doing outreach in jails and drug treatment programs for Standing Against Global Exploitation, a nonprofit providing services to sex industry survivors.

On her way home, at the corner of Turk and Jones Streets, Smith ran into an African American man leaning on a cane as he made his way across the street. "See this man right here? He's my baby's daddy," she said.

"You wish!" Robert Wise replied, with a half smile and a mischievous glint in his eye.

"Rob is the kind of people I worry about," Smith said later. While she's able to work, Smith explained, many of Bridgeway's residents are on a fixed income, such as disability or social security benefits – meaning they're priced out of the city's rental market with no hope of increasing their revenue.

It was out of concern for them in particular – the most vulnerable of Bridgeway's low-income tenants – that Smith convened a meeting after receiving notice of the Salvation Army's plans Jan. 9.

Yet they're certainly not the only ones in need of representation. While most of the tenants hold down steady jobs, they are underpaid and can have a hard time making rent. For example, Smith works full time but spends more than 40 percent of her take-home salary on rent at Bridgeway – $644 a month, to be exact.

The Salvation Army argues that it never aimed to enter the business of providing permanent housing. "Our intent, from the time we originally purchased the building, was always to provide transitional housing," Salvation Army program coordinator Stacey Cornell told the Bay Guardian.

The Salvation Army, she said, was faced with a difficult choice. It could conduct expensive maintenance on the old building, including installing fire sprinklers and doing seismic retrofitting, and continue to be bound by city regulations granting tenants permanent-resident status after 30 days. Or it could tear it down and build something different. The Salvation Army chose the latter and stopped accepting new tenants last year.

"Our intent in redeveloping this site is to better meet the needs of the Tenderloin community, which has seen a lot of changes in the last couple of decades," Cornell continued. The new project, she said, will "be more service-intensive and, we feel, much more appropriate to the population."

But 63-year-old Ron Lasher, a Bridgeway resident since 1977, is not convinced. "They bought a hotel hoping, through hook or crook, they could convert it to transitional housing," Lasher said.

Lasher believes the tenants' efforts and the Coalition on Homelessness's oversight will help ensure that the Salvation Army plays fair in the relocation process. "Once we organized, they knew they wouldn't get away with any shady tactics," he said.

Tenants received 90-day notices in mid April to vacate, meaning they'll be kicked out in July. The Salvation Army is meeting its legal obligations by helping residents find new housing and offering rent subsidies for up to 42 months. Still, tenant organizers worry that without additional affordable permanent housing, for many of them the deal could merely amount to a 42-month notice of homelessness.

Setting a precedent

As of May 12, Smith had found a place in El Sobrante but was worried she might lose it due to bureaucratic delays in obtaining the approval and the funds from Salvation Army that she needs to move in. Lasher hopes to remain in the Tenderloin and plans to volunteer with the Coalition on Homelessness when this is all over.

In the meantime, the tenants continue to meet every week. They've demanded a formal grievance procedure should anything go awry; and they're working on a database of new contact information to keep track of the Bridgeway tenants after they leave.

They're also taking their struggle an important step further. The Bridgeway tenants are asking the San Francisco Planning Commission not to approve the Salvation Army's demolition permit until all tenants have been relocated to units they can reasonably be expected to afford after the 42-month subsidy period has expired. To this end, they've elicited letters of support from Sups. Tom Ammiano, Gavin Newsom, Chris Daly, and Matt Gonzalez.

Should the Planning Commission follow their cue, it will raise the relocation standards that developers must meet when their projects involve displacing low-income tenants by tying demolition permits to specific and fair relocation requirements.

It's a critical issue for the downtown area, where two more buildings serving low-income tenants – the Civic Center Hotel and Trinity Plaza, which together represent more than 450 affordable units – stand to face the wrecking ball over the next year, and where, tenant activists say, the Mid-Market Redevelopment Project is sure to result in even more displacement.

"They don't have the 'I Got Mine' syndrome," Tracy said of the Bridgeway tenants. "What these people are trying to do is set a precedent. It gives tenants another organizing tool."

E-mail Camille T. Taiara at camille@sfbg.com.